Carl: First and foremost, read this account by a freelance war correspondent in Syria. It’s an impassioned account of how and why we’re getting perilously close to losing our ability to gather important information about global situations: Most media companies are unwilling to pay what it takes, because their audiences, us, don’t seem to care.

Next, I can’t put this any better than the headline does: “Please Stop Wearing Redface to A Tribe Called Red Shows.” Oh, and please stop wearing redface anywhere else. This kind of absolutely appalling ignorant fashionable-appropriation-trivialization-racism bullshit has been going on for several years, with the would-be-chic wearing headdresses and feathers and “tribal” makeup and holding “fashion powwows” (see Ke$ha among many, many others), but I didn’t think people would actually have the gall to wear it to concerts by actual aboriginal people, obviously thinking they were paying some kind of compliment. Can we take up a collection and buy these kids a clue?

Here, on the other hand, is something nicer about Ke$ha. I wouldn’t call this stealing, I’d call it a tribute to one of my favourite oddball bands ever. (I don’t have it on hand but she’s been photographed wearing a Residents T-shirt before.) As someone said, if even one Ke$ha fan buys a Residents album as a result, that’d be awesome.

On the appropriation/tribute/collaboration theme, there is a lot to say about Jay-Z’s dance with Marina Abromovich this week, and the developing relationship between hip-hop artists, fine-art-museum and auction culture (which I discuss a bit here) and now performance art (NB also Kanye’s collaborations with Vanessa Beecroft, among others), but time is short. Meanwhile enjoy Jerry Saltz’ s first-hand account of the Jay-Z-meets-the-art-world experience – kind of giddy, but kind of on-point too, because isn’t the central fact that (even in his recent, weaker period) someone like Jay-Z is at the very least as good and vital an artist as any of them?

Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Thursday. Here are a few of our favourite things from the Internet this week:

Carl: Rudy Rucker has reissued a lost classic of ’60s acidhead lit, William Craddock’s Be Not Content, as an ebook. On the strength of his introduction, I bought it immediately – just six bucks!

I’ve been waiting for great country-soul-rock interpreter Kelly Hogan’s new album for 11 years. Like, actively waiting, pacing around and around my living room, looking at my watch. And as of today I can hear a preview on NPR of I Like to Keep Myself in Pain, featuring songs by Stephin Merritt, Vic Chesnutt, Jon Langford, Robbie Fulks, Catherine Irwin and more. And Booker T. on organ. Start listening, no excuses.

Likewise, Jessica Cripin surveys the sorry state of men’s writing about masculinity. Luckily there are still novelists to read on the subject. And not just the obvious, like Chandler or Carver or some other Raymond. (Well, this one probably wouldn’t help much.) I spent the first couple of days of this week reading the Hunger Games trilogy straight through, and someone should write an analysis of how, for instance, the growth and near-destruction of the Peeta character (that name! phallic with the feminine ending) represents a voyage of negotiating masculinity and risking the boomerang-into-misogyny effect Crispin talks about. I’d go on but some of you haven’t read it yet – trust me, you’re missing out on a dozen hours of great wallowing in teenage dystopian head-trip adventure, not just sidelong gender studies.

If all of that was too grim, please let this fix it. And anything else that troubles you, ever:

Margaux: My great friend and collaborator Ryan Kamstra has launched an Indigogo campaign to help him finish his beautifully titled book, System’s Children. I am really excited about this book, and look! a painting of mine is the future cover. Your prize options for donating include an album, a book or A LIBRARY.

These two videos arrived separately in my inbox today. One regarding Canada’s WRONG-O move on Bill 78 followed by Canada’s WELL PLAYED Montreal! pots & pans action. The other, just another good day from Kanye and Jay-Z. They are best viewed as companions.

Chris:Alain Badiou, who recently published a new book about ~love~, articulates my main objection to online dating: “For me these [French dating site] posters destroy the poetry of existence. They try to suppress the adventure of love. Their idea is you calculate who has the same tastes, the same fantasies, the same holidays, wants the same number of children. [The sites] try to go back to organized marriages – not by parents but by the lovers themselves.”